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Real Estate Video: Maintaining Website Look And Feel When You Have More Than One Video

Everyone loves real estate video players. They are powerful tools that help to easily present videos to users of your website. The biggest issue with them, however, is that they often don't fit in with the look and feel of your website. YouTube has ade some progress in this area but f your site isn't a match for chrome, gray, or black..you are pretty much out of luck.

The approach that we are taking at http://vidlisting.com is a bit different. We extend our video infrastructure to other websites and present choices on how to present those videos. We have a number of options that actually fit in with the existing look and feel of websites for both the presentation and playing of large real estate videos in multiple languages.

The Full Video Landing Page

Miamism.com has a full selection of property videos available on a single page within the Miamism.com domain (http://www.miamism.com/custom/video). I this case, the only videos included on the landing page are the agent's own videos and all videos play within the miamism.com domain.

The Video Bar

ACOBIR, the real estate association in Panama, has taken a language specific subset of their member videos and put them in a single bar that random selects a fixed number of videos. Different agencies are represented in the same bar but all of the videos shown are in a single language. You can find this on the lower part of the ACOBIR home page (http://acobir.com) and all videos play within the ACOBIR domain.

The Single Video In Multiple Languages

The FIABCI chapter in Panama wanted to show single videos on their pages (http://fiabcipanama.com/default.asp). Thiugh their page is only in Spanish, they wanted the option for visitors to see the availability of other languages for that video as well and have all of these videos play within their own domain. Here is what we put together for them.

Managing real estate videos isnt so easy when you have a large number of them and availability in different languages. It's unlikely that anyone will want to cut and paste multiple players into a single listing page. We think that the above approached begin to show what's possible with real estate video. Just because the current paradigm is to have a chrome or black player, there is no need to be limited on how you choose to present your media. If you want to manage your video listings in a way that actually fit into the design of your web page..feel free to let us know.

Tony

Posted by A. Grey | Vidlisting.com| Real Estate Video Mentor on 07/31/2007 06:44 AM

Comments (15)

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15 Comments on Real Estate Video: Maintaining Website Look And Feel When You Have More Than One Video

JUL

2007

Tony - we all know that video is the latest and greatest tool out there to showcase listings - finding a company that does that as well as is sensitive to an agents needs is key. You guys have done a terrific job and look forward to what you come up with, since you are always improving your services.

Video is a great tool, really people do not need virtual tours any more..video's are the new virtual tours...especially as they are more reliable!

Rick & Ines: You guys are the masters of customer service. I have learned and still have much to learn just from watching how folks like you operate.

British Homes Group: Great point. Thanks for stopping by!

OCT

2007

I wonder what regular folks, proposed home buyers for example, like in a real estate related video. Do they want the music? Do they want to see a real estate representative in the video? Do they just want someone behind the camera doing a wlak through? Do they want a real voice behind the camera when they are doing the walk through or do they want a professional voice?

I wonder what real folks want? Have you pondered these questions at all?

For some reason and I am no pro by any means, it seems that the professional video gurus, kinda make this whole real estate video thing, cheesy.

Any thoughts on this topic?

Tony,

With high speed the way it is video will be what everybody wantsa in about a year. Good post and right on target.

Mike Lewis

vbcruiser: You bring up several interesting points along with a question that we ask ourselves every day, "I wonder what real folks want?"

There are a number of approaches to property videos. The key is doing what *buyers* respond to. We measure response in several ways - how many property videos they watch, how many contacts they make. We have experiemented with almost all of the approaches that you have listed. We've settled on our current approach because that's what buyers respond to (90,000 videos watched in August 2007 alone). See our post specifically on the topic: http://activerain.com/blogsview/233178/All-Visitors-Are-Not

Mike: We are definitely ramping up for management of dozens or hundreds of videos within the user's domain. Channels are fine for individual sellers but we believe that companies, brokers and associations want to have their branded method to manage videos under their own domain. Thanks for stopping by.

JAN

2008

If you're a little more tech savvy, if you buy flash, it enables you to change the color of the video player it exports to, we did that on a project I was working on a few months ago. If you're really savvy, you can make your own custom interface. There are lots of tutorials on the web about how to do it.

Robert: Our point is that a flash video player isnt always the best interface for managing video content in volume. I'm not sure that changing the color of the flash player resolves the issue. Before chanels are suggested as the answer, we've written a length on our blog as well about the shortcomings of channels. Thanks for adding to the discussion.

Tony

Oh I see, my mistake. I like the way CNN has thiers set up: http://www.cnn.com/video/

Robert: CNN really does have a nice setup. The new york times is a great example for including volume video content in with text articles and disimiliar content.

Tony

JUN

2008

I enjoy the layout of hulu.com & thomsonreuters.com - very simple and easy to navigate...minimalist design and style. I have so many ideas for a high end, slick real estate site that would draw a lot of traffic without all of the clutter. I do web designer and video tours so I do agree that web video is the way of the future. The whole web video evolution is happening now. Waiting a year to jump into web video is in my mind not the best decision. I'd like to help realtors with their website & videos, but I'm not sure where to start.

Andre

JUL

2008

I just tried the Tidewater video tour link and the guy doesnt mention that it isnt streaming video and takes over 10 minutes to download. Who is going to wait for a 10 minute download when there are plenty of streaming options available on other sites?.

**Editor's Note: I've removed some recent comments and reported them as SPAM for two reasons:

- The author spammed this post with an unrelated product announcement, links, and claims.

- I feel that he was rude in his follow-on comments (which I wont put up with). We are all professional so stay professional. People are allowed to disagree - live with it.

Tony

JUL

2008

Great stuff. I must work hard to keep up with all this new technology.

SEP

2008

Here's where most people in the industry miss the mark when it comes to video compared to virtual tours:

The REAL power in video is the portability. It is not about "putting all your eggs in one basket". Just because it's on YouTube doesn't mean anyone will see it there. People don't shop YouTube for Real Estate. Learn how to place it around through links and more importantly . . . emdbedding. 47% of people are more likely to puch a play butting than click a link on a website.
Video is the preferred media source for internet users.
1. 130+ million video are watched online each month with average view of 2.7 minutes. Indidivuals watch an average of 3 hours per month (about 67 videos).
2. Video is one of the most shared things on the internet.
3. 84% of home buyers are using the internet for an average of 8 weeks before taking the next step.
4. Those choosing a Realtor look for 2 things - honesty and integrity.
Put the above things together, look at what's out there, and you find the biggest problem with video in Real Estate . . . format and quality.
1. Realtors have to be in front of the camera and it is in their best interest to be becaue you have about 2.7 very valuable minutes to make an impression about your honesty and integrity. Still photos and "canned" bios don't do it. Ever read about someone and get one impression then you meet them and your whole opinion changes? Same concept.
2. You have to keep their interest by being yourself and give a great presentation about the house with voice overs. Speak like you would about the property if you were showing to a buyer right then.
3. Slideshows are not videos.
4. Stop trying to do it yourself and producing the "Blair Witch" project for Real Estate. You have done nothing but a disservice to the seller.
5. Get a tripod, learn about compression rates, and boost the color up. (if you want to venture down the DIY)
6. Get a wireless clip-on mic. Sound is extremely important. (if you want to venture down the DIY)
Plan where you are putting the video across the internet and use a more industry specific player. YouTube is definitely a place to be, but I do not suggest using it everywhere because of what pops up at the end whic is suggestions that could lead your view away. Plus even with great compression settings, YouTube's player still lack in quality of the video compared to others.
Do an "About Me" video and put that on your website.
Tips and How-To's are an ever increasing genre in the video world. More rich content, brings more people to you and coming back.

Video can truely be an investment in advertising rather than an expense if produced right and with maximum and effective use of the portability power. And sorry, but this is kind of sore spot for me right now in this industry.

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